LOS ANGELES — Over the past week, as wildfires destroyed vast portions of its home metropolis, Hollywood found itself violently impacted — and, at the same time, barely impacted at all.
With thousands of homes destroyed, many of them in neighborhoods favored by producers, executives, agents and stars, and hundreds of thousands of people under evacuation orders or warnings, little work got done at studio headquarters. Some studios closed entirely, and others encouraged employees to work remotely.
Consider the impact of the fires on Disney alone.
As of Monday, 64 Disney employees had lost their homes and hundreds more had been evacuated, including CEO Bob Iger and three members of his senior leadership team.
Iger has been overseeing Disney’s relief effort from a hotel, approving $15 million for community services and rebuilding efforts, arranging for Disney employees who have lost their homes to receive two months of free furnished housing and opening Disney’s studio wardrobe warehouses to employees who need clothes and shoes. He has also been calling Disney employees who lost their homes.
“I want them to know that people at the top of the company are looking after them, that we care,” Iger said. “We’re going to go through some really tough times here, but we’ll get through it together.”
Meanwhile, Disney’s movie assembly lines — like the rest of Hollywood’s — have been almost completely unaffected.
Disney has seen some flurries of ash on its Burbank lot, but no flames. Pixar and Lucasfilm, both owned by Disney, are based in Northern California.
Sony Pictures is in Culver City, far from any of the fires. Paramount Pictures and Netflix are in Hollywood, the neighborhood, which is 40 minutes by car from the two biggest fires. The sprawling Warner Bros. and Universal Pictures lots in the San Fernando Valley have been untouched.
For the most part, live-action movies are no longer shot in the Los Angeles region. It’s too expensive. Instead, movie production has moved to states like Georgia, New York, New Jersey and New Mexico as well as countries like Britain and Australia — all of which offer generous tax incentives.
Only two movies from major studios were affected by the fires. Filming was halted on “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle,” a 20th Century Studios remake of the 1992 thriller. The third “Avatar” movie, also from 20th Century, which Disney owns, briefly paused production too.
Universal, Sony, Lionsgate, Legendary Entertainment, Netflix, Amazon’s Prime Video, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Paramount and Warner Bros. had no movies shooting in Los Angeles over the past week.
“If you are a craftsman in the industry, if you’re crew, why would you rebuild here?” said Terry Press, a veteran movie marketer and a past president of CBS Films. “Wouldn’t you go to where the work is? And what will that mean for the vibrancy of this community?”
IATSE, a union representing camera operators, makeup artists, prop-makers, set dressers, lighting technicians, hairstylists, cinematographers and other craftspeople, said that roughly 8,000 members live in parts of Los Angeles that have been burned or evacuated.